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    W. B. Yeats: Poems
    W. B. Yeats: Poems
    W. B. Yeats: Poems
    Audiobook1 hour

    W. B. Yeats: Poems

    Written by William Butler Yeats

    Narrated by T. P. McKenna

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This compelling collection spans Yeats's career: from the poems of his early years, which display his interest in Irish myths and his hopeless passion for Irish patriot Maud Gonne, to the soaring, majestic poems of his old age. Works of precision, economy and sensuous, lyrical beauty, they include "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Byzantium," and "Leda and the Swan."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 5, 2006
    ISBN9781598872521
    W. B. Yeats: Poems
    Author

    William Butler Yeats

    William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

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    Reviews for W. B. Yeats

    4.5/5

    551 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a fantastic low-priced compilation, selected and introduced by Seamus Heaney.I agree that annotations would be nice, but luckily we now have the Internet as a resource.
    • 3/5
      Would have been served better by annotations. As an introduction to Yeats, I can't recommend unless you're already heavily familiar with Irish myth and history.
    • 5/5
      From his early Romantic poems to his later more visionary verse ensnared in occult and spritual symbolism, Yeats body of work is indispensable for any student of poetry. A cornerstone of Ireland's literary tradition.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed some poems better than others. I listened to this in an audio format, read by T. P. McKenna. It was my first time to listen to poetry in the audiobook format, and I found it more difficult to follow than poems in print. I think a longer pause between poems would help transition from one to the other a bit better. I tend to listen to audiobooks while driving, and distractions caused by traffic which don't cause one to lose much when listening to a novel create a bigger challenge in audio format. The narrator's voice reminded me of that of a stodgy old English professor.
    • 4/5
      Not my favourite recent poetry reads though still very evocative in places.
    • 5/5
      The best of the best.
    • 5/5
      I have given hourlong recitations of Yeats's poems, among the easiest to recall in English; for example, his tetrameters in the late "Under Ben Bulben" which contains his epitaph. I defy you to say this aloud three times without knowing most of it by heart: "Whether man die in his bed,/ Or the rifle knocks him dead,/ A brief parting from those dear/ Is the worst man has to fear." And his own epitaph is memorable, "Cast a cold eye/ On life, on death/ Horseman, pass by!" It is anti-conventional, since most epitaphs were written by clergy to scare the readers back to church, like this one in Pittsfield, MA: "Corruption, earth and worms/ Shall but refine this flesh..." etc. I seriously doubt the interred was consulted about that one. Yeats counters, look at this grave, and fogggetaboutit, Pass by!By memory I still have "When you are old," his adaptation of Ronsard, "Lake Isle of Innisfree," so imitative of the water lapping the shores, in its medial caesuras, "I hear lake water lapping...Though I stand on the roadway..I shall arise and go now..." And so interesting that WBY first had a truism, "There noon is all a glimmer, and midnight a purple glow," which he reversed to the memorable, "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon has a purple glow..." Ahh... a useful trick for writers. (My Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger noted the influence of Meredith on Innisfree.) "The Second Coming," whose opening I said in my flight fears of landing. The problem in reciting that poem is "The worst are full of passionate intensity." I had to reduce the intensity of my aloudreading. "Sailing to Byzantium," and ohers.I have also set to music seven of Yeats' poems, including "Brown Penny," "Lullaby," "Her Anxiety," and even "Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop." Some of these tunes, played decades ago, can be heard on my google+ page, no middle initial.Yeats's son Michael, fathered in his late fifties, toured the US in the 70s. A friend in the Berkshires heard him recall his father mainly shooing him from the room to write or recite. Sounds accurate. (Maybe that's why Shakespeare lived in London, his kids in Stratford!)I mentioned learning Yeats at Leonard Unger's knee, but also from Chester Anderson, Joycean and Irish specialist
    • 5/5
      My favorite poet, and the ultimate volume of his poetry.
    • 5/5
      Lyrical, mystical, beautifully crafted. Yeats not only spoke to the his time and place, he transcended.
    • 5/5
      My favorite book I have ever owned.
    • 5/5
      This anthology is thorough and well-organized. Yeats is one of the greatest poets of all time, and a student of his work cannot go wrong with this anthology. The notes on his works are not intrusive but provide just enough background.
    • 5/5
      I have enjoyed the poetry of William Butler Yeats for many years as evidenced by my well-worn copy of his Complete Poems. But there is more to enjoy when considering this protean author for throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events. "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?"("Among School Children", p 105)The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."There are always new things to be learned when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.
    • 5/5
      Yeats moves in my thoughts and in my life everyday. I have two battered collections of his poems, the first given me by a now dead friend. Who else has such music, or such passion?
    • 5/5
      Beautiful. I regularly return to this collection and reread them at random, out loud, to savor the language - a sign of poetry done right.
    • 4/5
      One of the most powerful voices in English-language poetry of the twentieth century. Lots of symbolism, some of it is quite arcane, but much is easily accessible.
    • 5/5
      Yeats has a knack for approaching emotions and situations obliquely and obscurely at first, and yet somehow hitting them right on by the time he's through. A perfect subtlety, dancing on the thin line between pathos and authenticity.